O What A Noble Mind
by Verdot
Summary: Ifalna is in the labs. It was always said that Lucrecia went to a cave, but how long did she linger?


_O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!  
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword;  
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,  
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,  
The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!  
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,  
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,  
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,  
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;  
That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth  
Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me,  
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see! _

_- Ophelia in Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1_

* * *

"You can't be noble that way."

When she breathed up against the glass I could see frost patterns. This woman was likely another of the hallucinations, whatever the steady drip of the IV provided. One drip, two drip, and I could make out her face. What a beautiful woman.

"What way?"

She drew a spiral in the frost patterns she left.

"The dying way. You're thinking about giving up."

I'd always heard things, always known that my head was not my own and that there was form and purpose to my life. This was why I was hooked up to an IV that allowed me just to think but hardly to move and my daughter... I didn't know where she was. The fact that this woman was suggesting, hinting, possibly reading my mind was almost too much.

I couldn't touch her to see if she was real. See if she was my own conscience berating me.

"Who are you?"

"Lucrecia."

It was a familiar echo of something. Humanity was interconnected in a different way than Cetra were and there had been a whisper of her everywhere. All women left behind strange patterns like spirals on glass when something happened to them. Was she dead? The steady drip of the IV made the voices so much quieter, I couldn't hear the gentle hum of life here. Only death. Only cold.

"I'm..." A fit of coughing seized me. There was something in my lungs, and when he let me see Aeris I could barely tell her stories before they tried to expel whatever it was. I had to wonder if it was poison he was giving me, but he was a smart enough man to prolong my life for as long as he could.

I'd been dying my whole life, though. Couldn't fix that.

"Ifalna." The way she said my name was the first tender sounding thing I'd heard from an adult in months. I wanted to touch her to see if she was real.

"How..."

"No one knows I'm still here."

---

"Now I want you to tell me every detail of the visions. I don't want to have to drag out the truth serum again."

"Doesn't work on me."

It would be easy to think of Hojo and entirely monstrous and cruel. But there was a balance between methodical, polite, and detached with him. It wasn't personal. Killing the professor, that might have been personal. Only for a moment, before he turned to me and offered his hand.

No, I couldn't paint him as a real monster. Not that I liked him at all, not that I didn't thinking very detailed thoughts about turning the drip on him, making him lose his mind. But I was supposed to be kind, I couldn't think like that. All my hatred had to be reserved for _It_. That which came from the sky.

"The visions, Ifalna. Even if that one concerning the paladin was a bit childish, it has to mean something. At the very least, I am monitoring your sanity."

I laughed, which quickly turned to coughing. Sanity. Only a scientist could use a word so cold to describe that.

"I saw a woman."

His inky eyebrows shot up, and without the perpetual scowl, I could see he might have been a handsome man once. I didn't want to think what I looked like.

"Did she speak to you?"

"Yes."

"What did she tell you?"

It wasn't what she said that mattered. Humanity is interconnected, much differently than anything else alive. When I thought about it later, the air around her whispered too. But not like with humans. Like something else.

"Nothing much. Just... not to give up."

He hunched again and peered. "Are you?"

"What?"

"Are you planning on giving up? Because I would hate to have to do something to Aeris, she's still much too young..."

"No. And don't threaten that."

It was back to detached then, and that flicker of something, something _personal_ was gone. No, Hojo didn't have a problem with me, as long as I cooperated. If only I weren't drugged so much. Maybe I could run.

I could run.

"Just be aware there are many dark corners here, Ifalna."

I hadn't realized he was speaking to me again. Sometimes when people spoke, it felt like just another voice in my head.

"She said her name was Lucrecia."

---

When she came to me the second time, I was still on the table. Hojo would let me lay out for a while before putting me back behind glass. I hadn't seen Aeris in a couple weeks, but I knew she was alright, if lonely. My daughter was a runner, and she'd slipped out the door.

Hojo had muttered about a Turk going over his head. Eventually he would give her back, this man, no matter how precocious and charming Aeris was. I knew even these Turks were not untouchable, and that science held a strange power over everyone. Not unlike the dark.

When she came to me, she didn't feel cold. But she didn't feel right.

"You're wilting," she said. It was a strange thing to use a word like 'wilt' for a person. Even I knew that.

"Why does no one know you're here?"

She played with the ribbon in my hair. Her fingers were a piano player's fingers, long and strong. I held my breath and the rock in my lungs felt heavy.

"I'm waiting."

The tracks along her arm were bluish instead of pinkish. There was a dissonance there, and I could only look for a second.

"You couldn't be noble, could you?" I wanted to say more but the coughing again. Maybe it wasn't the steady drip that caused it to happen. Maybe it was my conscience.

When she touched my cheek, it felt like fire. Like the trail of a comet or whatever else destructive I could think of. I had memories of fire, but I didn't have the experience; I hid in Icicle for that reason.

"You and I are ruiners."

---

When Aeris came back, she told me stories about the hallways she'd walked in. The steady babble of a small but intelligent child wasn't quite like music, but it had been so long since I'd heard it. Details were hard to hold onto, and names, but she at least knew what freedom was now.

What most people forgot about mothers was that they were once women. And women sometimes made mistakes.

"Mommy? Mommy, don't be sad, I won't run away again."

"I'll go with you, next time."

Just like men did.

---

He was a black and white and yellowed flesh spot in my vision.

"I'm going to lower the dosage, your hallucinations are no longer useful."

The thrum in my ears was all electronic, it wasn't what it was supposed to be. Had I been asleep? I didn't know for how long. Was there--yes there was a pink spot too.

"Lucrecia is dead."

I was pretty sure he wasn't talking to me.

---

It took a while to get used to feeling again.

The _presence_, which I hadn't been able to feel in whatever time I'd been out was the first thing I noticed. Then the _other_. The first was frightening, but the second was calming. Whatever held the _presence_ was weak, at least.

It made me sick to my stomach. Abomination.

"You've dealt with it all very well, you know."

It was coming from her. I should have known.

"You're... one of them." We had talked without speaking. She had been almost kind, in a way. I should have had a right to be betrayed.

"_It_ won't let me die. The one mistake of my life, do you know how that feels?"

_It feels like rejections, like a man with laughter hiding behind his glasses, it feels like a rock in the womb, like knowing that someday they will--_

They were alone in the dark. Aeris was curled up like a petal, sleeping soundly. Not far, but just far enough.

"Let me out of here, Lucrecia."

"The green in my son's eyes has gotten colder. I think he knows I'm there, but he doesn't know what I am. What am I?"

It was frightening when the proud finally fell. She'd been falling for quite some time, and waiting. She'd been waiting on _me_.

There was no glass between us, and she still burned. It would hurt.

"You have to ask the Planet for forgiveness, not me."

Spoken like a true believer.

---

It was only one door, one insignificant door that had been left ajar. Hojo wouldn't notice a detail like that, not with the grand ideas in his head. But a small and precocious child might.

I was following Aeris, not the other way around. Aeris always was a runner.

When it happened, and it happened suddenly, the shortness of breath and my legs giving out, I should have felt guilty. Because all she wanted, I was getting.

I didn't pretend that I wanted to live. The woman with the widow's eyes could tell. The mother in me was sated.

But the woman. Well, that was a different story.

* * *

Done for yurichallenge, despite not being very... yuri. I am endlessly fascinated by Ifalna and her possible interactions with Lucrecia. 


End file.
